Keir Starmer will need “considerable courage” to deliver his pledge to take action when ministers “fall short of the required standards” but will reap the benefits in the long term if he does so, former ethics watchdog Jonathan Evans has said.
Lord Evans, who was chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life from 2018 to 2023, said the prime minister will also need to embed “clear structures” for handling standards issues and ensure that they are not inhibited by “political problems”.
Labour committed in its manifesto to reform standards through the creation of an ethics and integrity commission “to ensure probity in government”.
And upon becoming PM, Starmer told journalists in his first press conference that he was “really clear with the cabinet that standards apply” and that those “falling short of the required standards will face consequences”.
“I made it clear the ministerial code, they will be receiving a copy of it, and it will have the Nolan Principles inside and alongside it,” he added.
Evans was asked about Starmer's pledge on John McFall’s Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast in an episode published today. Lord McFall asked: “The new prime minister has already mentioned that ethics and standards and conduct is very important. What advice would you have for him? He's in his early days, so this is the best time to give him that advice.”
Evans responded: “I think there need to be clear structures for handling problems of this sort. They need to be insulated from political problems. It will also take considerable courage because sometimes there is a short-term political cost to taking action on standards issues, particularly if they are amongst allies, but there is a long-term political advantage in doing that, in my view.”
He said Boris Johnson – who quit as prime minister in 2022 amid a storm over multiple ethics issues including Partygate and the Owen Paterson affair – would have “saved a huge amount of political damage” by paying “a little bit more attention to standards issues”.
“There may be a short-term advantage in bending the rules, but there's a long-term advantage in being seen to be acting with integrity,” Evans added. “Keep that long-term view, and I think that this will be a political advantage.”
In his first two months as prime minister, Starmer has faced questions over his government’s integrity after a a series of civil service appointments were made to individuals with links to the Labour Party.
One of these roles was changed to an unpaid adviser position following criticism.
The government has also come in for criticism for replacing non-executive directors, and for providing a No.10 access pass to a Labour donor.
Starmer dismissed the criticism, saying he wouldn't be taking "lectures" on propriety from the Tories and said he was "absolutely determined to restore honesty and integrity to government".
Appearing on the podcast, Evans also said he hopes that the government will accept some of the CSPL’s recommendations in its 2021 Upholding Public Standards report that previous governments chose not to adopt.
When Rishi Sunak’s government responded to the report last year, it fully accepted just 14 of the committee’s 34 recommendations and rejected 10 outright.
It stopped short of accepting demands for fundamental reforms such as placing the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, the commissioner for public appointments, and the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments on a statutory footing.
Evans, then still chair of the CSPL, said at the time that some "progress has been made" but that the reforms "should not be the end of the story”.
He told McFall that the lack of statutory footing for ethics bodies means the government “can just get rid of them if it wants to”.
“Our view is they need to have a stronger basis and there needs to be a stronger basis of selection of people on those bodies so that people can have confidence in their independence,” he added.
“Unfortunately, the government of the day did not accept any of those recommendations, which I think is very regrettable. Although to be fair, under prime minister Sunak, some of those recommendations were adopted. One always hopes that at some point, perhaps government will come back and accept more of those recommendations.”